The Life of Sir William Logan. By Bernard J. Harrington,
BA. (Sampson Low and Co.)—Sir W. Logan was a Scotehman of Canadian birth. His father sent him to be educated at Edinburgh, where he became dux at the High School under James Pillar's, who was then rector. (It is interesting to learn, by the way, that the rector's class consisted of 200, the third class of 130, and the first, or lowest, of ZOO ; there must have been a fine field here for the survival of the fittest.) He distinguished himself again at the University, bat left it, to follow commerce; and commerce again he abandoned, when the time came that made it possible, for geological science. His first introduction to this, the business of his life, was the being set to superintend some smelting operations in Wales. He made a survey of the country which attracted the favourable attention of persons qualified to judge. But the work to which his best years and energies were given was the geological survey of Canada, a " herculean task," as Professor Sedgwick called it, which he did not, indeed, live to finish, but with which his name is indissolubly connected. He was exactly the man for the work. Enthusiastic in temper, robust in constitution, and placed by circumstances above the suspicion of personal ends, he conciliated the support which was wanted, and then carried out the plans with admirable energy. The anecdote of how be spent a night in the woods, without food or tobacco (indeed, he never smoked), in the midst of a thunderstorm, perfectly content because he had discovered what he wanted to know, and was seen next morning "emerging from the bush, hammer in hand, occasion- ally pounding a rock as he advanced," is curiously characteristic of the man. No small physical gifts were wanted for the doing of such work as this. It is satisfactory to find that both Canada and England appreciated the man who possessed them. Sir W. Logan died in 1875, being then in his seventy-eighth year.
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